Ulrich Alexan­der Boschwitz was born in Berlin in 1915. He fled Ger­many in 1935 and wrote his nov­els while study­ing at the Sor­bonne in Paris. In 1939, he set­tled in Eng­land, but after the war broke out, Eng­land interned him as an ​“ene­my alien” — despite his Jew­ish back­ground — and shipped him to Aus­tralia. In 1942, Boschwitz was allowed to return to Eng­land, but his ship was tor­pe­doed by a Ger­man sub­ma­rine, and he was killed at the age of twenty-seven.